


What does it feel like?

by igloriana



Category: The Borgias
Genre: 2x02 spoilers, Season 2 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igloriana/pseuds/igloriana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Micheletto's nighttime activities leave him unsettled and pensive. Written for<a href="http://mind-conundrum.livejournal.com/10054.html#cutid1">  The Borgias Fic a Thon</a> on Livejournal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What does it feel like?

It didn’t need to be said that he had never been a handsome man. He’d never needed to be, never cared to be. For whom could he ever wish to notice? Less remarkable was better for business; but tonight, it had occurred to him that romance, rather than business, could possibly be worth the energy it consumed – if only because it seemed that it could prove interesting. 

But that was the curse of working for the wealthy: anything could be interesting when there was a lot of money at stake. And these two star-crossed lovers, the boy-groom Paolo and the Lady Lucrezia Borgia, could destroy what remained of the family’s reputation, and that could be costly indeed. 

Before Cardinal Borgia had begun utilizing Micheletto’s particular set of skills, it would never have occurred to him that as a hired hand in political intrigue (or murder, essentially, but these nobles never said what they meant) that he might ever be needed to take a young man to his lover. _Were the brothels not still in operation?_  

 

He had felt an unexpected spike of curiosity when he’d seen the boy’s crumpled expression as he found way to his lover, but that would not bear thinking of. He was never to wonder about the affairs he was asked to participate in; this was his profession, he couldn’t find himself questioning how the means for his use came to be. It was a matter of eating, not interest.

 

But, wonder he did. It was a cool night, but it was beginning to smell like summer, and a breeze dried the sweat at the nape of his neck as he walked down the street, head down. He usually didn’t spare a thought to that which he could not afford. Love, he certainly could not afford. It was a privilege that only the safe could savor. 

 

Micheletto didn’t see his life in right or wrongs. Only in risks. Some taken, could never be taken back, and he’d learned that. **Painfully**. But heartache was a risk he’d never even thought to fear, love being no choice he’d ever been in danger of making. 

 

So why could he not think of a thing else, tonight? Was it so unsettling, the image of two people who should be fearing death, fearing instead only death before a reunion? Well, yes. A somehow horrifying scenario, if he said so himself. He had never understood the power that sexual satisfaction, a factor he always considered to be the illusion of love, could hold over men, but he was now emending this critical look at the emotion of love entirely. Perhaps love was beyond satisfaction. A divinity of bodies and minds, that could cause the agony Paolo seemed to be feeling. The boy had said it hurt, and though the pain of love was a concept he was familiar with, it was nothing he’d actually witnessed before. It was quite like a myth, like a tale from the Holy book itself, something that one acknowledged to be truth but never saw nor deigned to practice.

 

Surely, it was a burning pain. Even the Cardinal himself had killed, rather recklessly, to free his lover, a nun now; the holy robes worn by both individuals he found to be extremely ironic. An adulterer and murderer both sworn to a god that never spoke his love in return. The love for God seemed to require docility, another irony considering that the only Cardinals he’d ever encountered were vastly corrupted men, not likely to be anything but vicious and unyielding. Perhaps achieving divinity was in understanding the unholy. More ironies.

 

In that case, Micheletto supposed he could easily fall in love. If it took badness to accomplish good, than his heart might be stone, but enough heat might melt it. 

 

Molten rock? He sniffed in amusement at the idea. He was too tired tonight, too pensive from the moonlight. And now that he looked up, he was mere strides from his bed. How had the time passed so quickly? Most nights he never took his eyes off of the streets around him, the moving of the dark. It seemed love really was a distraction, was it not?

 

He smiled to himself.  _No._  Love would never do for an assassin who served kings and princes. 

 


End file.
